Strangers Again
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1169. Quinn and Jesse have not been taken home. Instead they have a brand new and frightening world to discover. - Berry-st generation 2 series


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 55th cycle. Now cycle 56!_

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**"Strangers Again"  
G1!Quinn/Jesse, G2!New Directions  
Berry-St generation 2 series  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_  
**

**_a/n: So there's new terminology here, but it's real easy.  
The Canon world is generation 0. That's done, we've left them.  
The original AU, McKinley Jesse/Carmel Rachel, is generation 1. Ongoing.  
The new AU, as you will discover here, is generation 2. Here we go..._**

When they had gotten back to the Fabray house, being mindful not to wake anyone, they had gone up to Quinn's room. Once the door was shut, she watched as Jesse went up to her desk. "What are you doing?" she whispered. He looked to his phone, and he sighed.

"You better get some sleep," he turned, showing her a sheet he had found. "First day of school tomorrow… It's September."

"Junior year," she blinked. "We've moved forward a few months."

"At least I can stick around and help you, assuming this guy is me, too, he'll have graduated high school, Carmel, apparently. Although I don't get why he's not off to college," Jesse frowned.

"We'll figure that out tomorrow, okay, I promise," she sighed, and he nodded. After a beat, he could see her start to waver, like she was about to cry, and he took a few steps toward her, holding his hand toward her, like he was asking permission, and she chuckled and sobbed at once as she moved into his arms. "Why aren't we home yet?" she asked.

"I don't know. But we did this once, okay? We can do it again. We'll get there, together," he swore. "We've got a few hours before you need to go to school. Go to sleep, I'll see what I can find out for you."

"What are you going to do in the morning, my mother will be here…"

"I'll go to sleep in my car, it's fine. I'll have to find a way to get into McKinley."

"Got this all figured out, uh?" she stared at him, and he kissed her forehead.

"Go to bed," he insisted, so she did.

When she woke up again, the sun was shining, and there was no sign of Jesse, save for an envelope under her phone on the nightstand. She sat up, quickly opening it up and pulling out a few sheets which she unfolded. He had kept to the essentials, listed in bullet point form. There was just no point in sugar coating it, but even knowing that, going through the list had been harder than she would have thought.

She had wanted to cry a handful of times. She had wanted to scream just as much. What she read was putting together an image of the world they had entered as something like a nightmare. Her own world was easy, and for all the differences they'd had to deal with, the world she and Jesse and spent the last couple of months in had not been all too… traumatic.

After a shower to properly wake her up and prepare her for what she'd have to face, she had gotten dressed and gone downstairs. Soon she would find her first item from Jesse's list come to pass.

_Your parents have divorced. Your father has moved out._

Her mother had of course been so very curious as to who was the young man who had come ringing at their house at 2:20 in the morning. Knowing it was likely Jesse would have to be able to actually enter the house again, she'd said he was a friend, and she'd find out what that was about later. The vibe was familiar to her though, and somehow she knew… This world's Quinn had been pregnant, too, like the other one, probably had been kicked out like her as well before she was able to return home, once Russell Fabray had been kicked out.

If she could have, she would have stayed here. The idea of going to McKinley, of seeing what this world had done to the people she knew and cared for… She knew she had to though, knew she had to see what she was up against, if she was ever going to get to go home, for real.

Walking out of the house, she had seen Jesse's car, up the block, not right in front of the house, and right there in the back seat, he was curled up, sleeping. She really wished he could come with her… It would make things easier. But he couldn't, so on she went to school. She wore regular clothes, not a Cheerios uniform. She hadn't found any in her closet so she would have known even without the list.

_You were kicked off the Cheerios a few months ago. Don't know why._

She knew, and he would have connected the dots if he knew more, but either way, this was the least of her worries at this point. Going into that building, like before, nothing seemed so out of place, not at first. You really had to look, to notice the details. What she really saw were the people though.

_Artie and Tina are dating._

She had to wonder how much time he'd had to spend, browsing through all their Facebooks, Twitters, whatever he could find… She saw them though, Artie and Tina, going down the hall. This looked to track with what she knew, of her world and the other, so she just let them go by… they looked happy. With everything else she would be seeing, they were a flicker of hope, one she needed.

The clap of a locker shutting had made her skid to a stop and turn around, and it made her throat shut tight. And that was before she'd even read the other piece of information about him.

_Puck spent some months in juvenile detention. Don't know why._

When he'd looked up and seen her staring back at him, he'd just frowned and moved on his way. She let out a breath… She knew in the other world, the other one where a pregnancy had been involved, he had been the father, so he had probably been it here, too… He looked different from both versions of him she had previously known. There was something just gone from his eyes, and she had to know what it was.

_Last October, there was an accident. Puck was driving, Mike and Matt were riding along. Puck only had cuts and bruises. Mike had leg crushed in the wreckage and it was amputated. Matt was thrown from the car. He never made it to the hospital._

When she'd read it at first she had remained in shocked silence for a minute or two, unable to process, thinking about her friends, one of them losing his life, the others…

She was brought back to reality when she saw Kurt walk by. There was something in the way he looked around, in how he walked, like he was lost, confused. She didn't know what it was that made her do it, but she went up to him.

"Kurt? Are you okay?" He looked at her, hesitated.

"I'm… uh… I don't know, I… I should go…"

"No, hey, hold on, tell me what's happening," she spoke kindly, and he stared back to her.

"I can't, you're going to think I'm crazy," he insisted, and she blinked… It wasn't completely unreasonable, if she and Jesse had been brought to this new place, what if…

"It's not supposed to be September, is it?" she asked him, and the look in his eyes was unmistakable. "It's okay, you're not crazy, it's happening to me, too."

"What… what is…" he asked, still confused.

"You're in a… I guess you could call it an alternate world, or a parallel universe." He just kept staring at her. "I know how it sounds, but it's going to sound a lot worse to other people, so you need to keep it to yourself and play along, okay? And that includes your girlfriend."

"My what?" the statement had had the desired effect to get him talking again, and Quinn showed him one item on the list.

_Kurt is apparently dating Mercedes, I don't get it._

"What is this, who wrote that?" he asked, and she took it away from him before he could cause a scene by reading the rest.

"Jesse," she told him. "He's here, too. I'll explain more later, right now you just need to…"

"Damn it, Chang, answer your phone!" she paused when she heard Santana go by, glaring at her phone.

"What's wrong?" she asked her, and the cheerleader paused, rolling her eyes at her.

"What's it to you?" Santana scoffed, carrying on without answering.

"Quinn…" Kurt had started, but she grabbed his hand and led him toward the door. "What are you… Where are you taking me?"

"Come on, it's a hunch," was all she'd say.

They had taken her car, which she'd had to go and pick up from Jesse's uncle's house, and driven to Mike's house. They could hear him from outside, and Quinn knew she had been right. She ran for the door and Kurt was following behind her. She rang the doorbell, banged on the door, until Mrs. Chang answered the door. She didn't wait to be let in, she cut past her, following the sounds of the cries up to Mike's room. She stopped once she saw him.

He was laid out on his bed, screaming and thrashing, and she could see why… She couldn't imagine what it would have felt like, to wake up and find he was suddenly missing his right leg to above his knee. She moved to kneel on the bed and held her hands to either of his arms.

"Mike! Calm down, listen to me! Listen! I know why you're freaking out! I know your leg is supposed to be there!" It didn't quiet him right away, but she could feel his cries diminish just a bit, so she carried on. "It doesn't have to stay that way, you can go back, do you understand? You can go back to your world, I'll help you!" It was a few more seconds before he looked at her, but when he did, she could hear his cries die away, until he was just breathing heavily from exertion.

"What… what are you… I don't…"

"I know you're confused right now, but I can explain everything," she nodded to him.

"Can you?" She froze. She'd forgotten about her. She looked back over her shoulder to find her 'intervention' had been witnessed not only by Kurt but by Mrs. Chang as well. She'd heard it all. Now she'd have to explain it to her as well.

She had read the list a good five times over, and the one event that seemed to precede all the others was one that had hurt as much as the others, for the possibility that it might have been the cause of everything that had followed.

_Principal Figgins shut down the New Directions almost as soon as they came to be, thanks to Coach Sylvester. There is no Glee Club._

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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